Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/541

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recommendations for control of convicts. But a despatch (17th Jan. 1824) requesting the Admiralty to send a ship of war *'witliout delay*' to take formal possession in the name of the King of all Australian territory on the north-west coast and the adjacent islands, can bear no such construe- tion. The Admiralty sent Captain J. J. Gordon Bremer in H.M.S. Tamar to perform the task. He selected (18*24) a site which he called Fort Dundas, at Melville Island. The settlement was maintained until March 1829. Li 1826 Major Lockyer occupied King George's Sound with soldiers sent from Sydney. Another settlement, formed by Captain Stirling, R.N. lof H.M.S. Success) in 1827, in Raffles Bay, on a peninsula to the east of Melville Island, was also- abandoned in 1829, the expectation of commerce with the visiting Malays having been disappointed, and the assertion of sovereignty over the territory being deemed sufficient.* The overland expedition which Brisbane planned, and which Hume successfully conducted, — being of the first importance — has been first described. There had been some suspicion that the French had covetous designs in the South • Brisbane availed himself of the services of Allan Cunningham, Botanical Collector for the Royal Gardens at Kew* Cunningham was indebted to Sk J, Banks for his appointment. He was with Oxley on the Lachlan river in 1817< He was the companion of Captain P. P. King, R.N., in the voyages undertaken in the Alermaid and the Bathurst. He conducted scientific expeditions himself in 1822 and 1823. He determined to explore the country between Bathurst and the Plains (Liverpool), which Oxley had dis- covered in 1818. Travelling eastward he was rejoiced, after skirting the cordillera where the affluents of the Hunter river are divided from those of the Nammoy, to pierce the rugged mountains at the gap which he called Pandora's Pass, Increasing laiowledge of natural pastures stirred settlers Ito send their flocks and herds to the newly-found lands. ' A vulgar error has ntjcriboci to Lord Jolin Ruasell the aafeguarding of Lustralia ; but, after what was done in tbe first decade of the century, jc>rd Liverpool, for whom Canniiig was Foreign Secretary, deserves the ^credit. Governor Darling, as ivill be seen, deserved praise, for hia guardiiinship, in the time of Lord Liverpool,